The end of cultural policy?¹

ABSTRACT

The article discusses whether we are approaching the end of public cultural policy in Western democracies, because contemporary cultural policy is not adapted to major transformation processes in contemporary societies. I discuss seven different challenges/scenarios that public cultural policy has to confront today: (1) It appears to be very difficult to democratise culture. (2) Public authorities consistently continue to support cultural institutions that may be obsolete. (3) Professional artists are still poor, despite public support schemes. (4) Public cultural policy is still predominantly national, despite the globalisation of cultural production and distribution. (5) Public authorities increasingly justify subsidies to culture with reference to the beneficial effects that art and culture could have outside the cultural field. Therefore, one might argue that other public bodies could take better care of cultural affairs. (6) A specific public cultural sector may appear to ‘imprison’ culture in a bureaucratic ‘iron cage’. (7) Finally, one might argue that a public cultural policy has no sense in a period of stagnating public finances. In addition, I discuss several counterarguments to these challenges, without coming to a definite conclusion. I have based the analysis on available comparative research about the public cultural policies of Western democracies, predominantly Norwegian cultural policy.

KEYWORDS:

• Democratisation of culture
• performing arts institutions
• artist policy
• globalisation
• instrumental cultural policy
• bureaucratisation
• economic stagnation

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1. I have partly based this article on a preliminary discussion in the final chapter of our book (in Norwegian) ‘Kulturpolitikk. Organisering, legitimering og praksis’ (Mangset and Hylland 2017). The author of the present article was also the first author of that specific chapter.

2. Many previous Norwegian ministries have been abolished, and several new ministries have been established during the last 150 years, see: https://www.regjeringen.no/no/om-regjeringa/tidligere/departementer_embeter/regjeringssekr_dep/nedlagte-departementer-og-sekretariater-/id426142/, May 2018.—Norway had a Ministry for Church and Education—responsible even for cultural policy—before 1982. In 1982, Norway established its first Ministry of Culture, responsible even for science. Since then this Ministry’s responsibilities has changed slightly several times. The French ‘Sports ministry’ may be another example of instability/changing responsibilities. The responsibilities of this ministry has changed slightly several times since WWII.

3. Just 8% of the Norwegian population attended opera/operetta in 2016, primarily people with a long-cycle tertiary education (Vaage 2017, 26).

4. Norwegian Governments culture budget 2018: «Regjeringen ønsker å legge til rette for vekst og utvikling i kulturlivet, og å styrke kunstneres muligheter for økte inntekter» (p. 13). (The Government aims to facilitate growth and development in cultural life, and to strengthen artists’ potential for increased income”, https://www.regjeringen.no/contentassets/9f6729dc46e2463091dca2d00227fa39/no/pdfs/prp201720180001kuddddpdfs.pdf, May 2018.

5. I have omitted a footnote in the original article.

6. The annual artistic income of a Norwegian visual artist was around 9000 Euros on average in 2013. Many visual artists of course earned much less, because of the skewed income structure (Heian, Løyland, and Kleppe 2015).

7. The metaphor ‘bureaucratic iron cage’ refers of course to Max Weber’s famous writings about the bureaucratic order that may trap individuals into a system world (i.e. Weber 1967 [1930], 1971; DiMaggio and Powell 1991).

8. I do not know whether Solhjell would agree with all this.

9. http://www.culturalpolicies.net/web/unitedkingdom.php?aid=61, Jan. 2018.

10. https://www.culturalpolicies.net/web/index.php, May 2018.